Borrowed from http://sugarlabs.org/go/Summer_of_Code/SL_application. See http://code.google.com/p/google-summer-of-code/wiki/AdviceforMentors for more advice. To learn to navigate the actual Google Summer of Code website, see http://socghop.appspot.com/document/show/gsoc_program/google/gsoc2010/userguide.

==How does a mentoring organization apply?==

==How does a mentoring organization apply?==

Line 32:

Line 29:

By participating in GSoC 2013, we hope to grow our base of open source developers interested in embedded and heterogeneous multi-core software development environments that provide long-term power and performance advantages over the limited use cases of desktop and existing mobile computers. We hope to enable those developers to apply the core components running on BeagleBoard to take computing into more environments and with new environmental interactions.

By participating in GSoC 2013, we hope to grow our base of open source developers interested in embedded and heterogeneous multi-core software development environments that provide long-term power and performance advantages over the limited use cases of desktop and existing mobile computers. We hope to enable those developers to apply the core components running on BeagleBoard to take computing into more environments and with new environmental interactions.

−

Beyond basic technology issues, we also hope to create better versions of popular open source applications for this low-cost/low-power platform and the ARM, C6000 and SGX processors used to power the different Beagle boards. Because the Beagle platform has open source hardware, any software designed on it can be taken and put into entirely new products.

+

We hope to increase interest in computers and electronics through improved access, simplified interfaces and example projects.

+

+

Beyond basic technology issues, we also hope to create better versions of popular open source applications for this low-cost/low-power platform and the ARM, C6000, SGX and PRU processors used to power the different Beagle boards. Because the Beagle platform has open source hardware, any software designed on it can be taken and put into entirely new products. Leverage of embedded Linux further helps software developed to be easily used in other systems.

===If you answered “yes” to the question above please summarize your involvement and the successes and challenges of your participation. Please also list your pass/fail rate for each year.===

−

Yes. Students advanced the state of the XBMC media center application on ARM, OpenCV using heterogeneous processing systems, FFTs on ARM, pulse width modulation under Linux, compilation and invocation of heterogeneous processor functions under Linux and USB bus analysis under Linux.

+

Students advanced the state of the XBMC media center application on ARM, OpenCV using heterogeneous processing systems, FFTs on ARM, pulse width modulation under Linux, compilation and invocation of heterogeneous processor functions under Linux and USB bus analysis under Linux.

+

We had an excellent set of mentors with 3 mentors for every student to ensure high availability of mentor time via the IRC channel. Our mentors had deep knowledge relevant to the projects and were able to assist the students in each of their technical challenges. We monitored student progress with weekly blog posts and IRC meetings to keep them on track and resolve any blocking issues. We collected short video presentations introducing each project, giving observers a good idea of the students' goals. We screened out projects that wouldn't provide sufficiently reusable software for the rest of the community.

−

We had an excellent set of mentors with 3 mentors for every student to ensure high availability of mentor time via the IRC channel. Our mentors had deep knowledge relevant to the projects and were able to assist the students in each of their technical challenges. We monitored student progress with weekly blog posts and IRC meetings to keep them on track and resolve any blocking issues. We collected short video presentations introducing each project, giving observers a good idea of the students' goals. We screened out projects that wouldn't provide sufficiently reusable software for the rest of the community.

+

We had some challenges shipping hardware to students on a timely basis and them getting charged taxes upon receipt, but we have plans in place to make it run smoother this year by getting local TI or other company offices involved. Getting local business offices involved would also enable a bit more face-to-face interaction as we can also invite local mentors to local meet-ups at those offices. Not all the code was directly adopted by the upstream projects and made available across the BeagleBoard community. Integration into a distribution will be a requirement this time to help with making the software more available to the BeagleBoard community and greater emphasis will be given on following up with upstream developers. More focus will be given to projects directly impacting the BeagleBoard community, rather than relying on upstream projects that might not be fundamentally motivated to adopt the patches.

−

We had some challenges shipping hardware to students on a timely basis and them getting charged taxes upon receipt, but we have plans in place to make it run smoother this year by getting local TI or other company offices involved. Getting local business offices involved would also enable a bit more face-to-face interaction as we can also invite local mentors to local meet-ups at those offices. Not all the code was directly adopted by the upstream projects and made available across the BeagleBoard community. Integration into a distribution will be a requirement this time to help with making the software more available to the BeagleBoard community and greater emphasis will be given on following up with upstream developers. More focus will be given to projects directly impacting the BeagleBoard community, rather than relying on upstream projects that might not be fundamentally motivated to adopt the patches.

+

Pass/fail rate for 2010: 6/6

−

===If your organization participated in past GSoCs, please let us know the ratio of students passing to students allocated, e.g. 2006: 3/6 for 3 out of 6 students passed in 2006.===

+

===If your organization has not previously participated in Google Summer of Code, have you applied in the past? If so, for what year(s)?===

===What is the main development mailing list for your organization? This question will be shown to students who would like to get more information about applying to your organization for GSoC 2011. If your organization uses more than one list, please make sure to include a description of the list so students know which to use.===

+

===What is the main development mailing list for your organization?===

===Does your organization have an application template you would like to see students use? If so, please provide it now. Please note that it is a very good idea to ask students to provide you with their contact information as part of your template. Their contact details will not be shared with you automatically via the GSoC 2011 site.===

+

===Who will be your backup organization administrator?===

−

About you

+

Cathy Wicks (c-wicks@ti.com)

−

# What is your name?

+

===What criteria did you use to select the mentors? Please be as specific as possible.===

−

# What is your email address?

+

Mentors were chosen based on personal knowledge of their contributions over IRC helping community members, the mailing list, and specific projects of interest. With the BeagleBoard.org community existing now for 5 years, many of the same members are still very active and well-known to our GSoC administrators. We typically meet up at Embedded Linux Conference, Design West, Linaro meetings and several other small events. Given frequent support over IRC, it is clear which proposed mentors are the best candidates.

−

# What is your eLinux wiki username?

+

−

# What is your IRC nickname?

+

−

# What is the name of your School and in what country?

+

−

# What is your primary language? (We have mentors who speak multiple languages and can match you with one of them if you'd prefer.)

+

−

# Where are you located, and what hours do you tend to work? (We also try to match mentors by general time zone if possible.)

+

−

# Have you participated in an open-source project before? If so, please send us URLs to your profile pages for those projects, or some other demonstration of the work that you have done in open-source. If not, why do you want to work on an open-source project this summer?

+

−

About your project

+

===What is your plan for dealing with disappearing students? Please be as specific as possible.===

+

We will set the expectation that students should not be out of communication for more than 60 hours (i.e., the length of a weekend) without prior notification to their mentor. We'll also hold mandatory weekly meetings in IRC for all the students to report on progress made, problems encountered, and proposed next steps.

−

# What is the name of your project?

+

All mentors are expected to review the GSoC wiki and review the best practice sections. The project administrators will monitor all the projects and try to identify issues that might lead to disappearing contributors before the problem becomes unsolvable. (This applies to the next few answers, as well).

−

# Describe your project in 10-20 sentences. What are you making? For whom are you making it, and why do they need it? What technologies (programming languages, etc.) will you be using?

+

−

# What is the timeline for development of your project? The Summer of Code work period is about 11 weeks long; tell us what you will be working on each week.

+

−

# Convince us, in 5-15 sentences, that you will be able to successfully complete your project in the timeline you have described. This is usually where people describe their past experiences, credentials, prior projects, schoolwork, and that sort of thing, but be creative. Link to prior work or other resources as relevant. Provide references such as professors who know your work if you like. Please feel free to visit our IRC channel, #beagle on irc.freenode.net, and ask for help.

+

−

You and the community

+

===What is your plan for dealing with disappearing mentors? Please be as specific as possible.===

−

+

−

# If your project is successfully completed, what will its impact be on the BeagleBoard.org community? Consider who will use it and how it will save them effort. Give 3 answers, each 1-3 paragraphs in length. The first one should be yours. The other two should be answers received from feedback of members of the BeagleBoard.org community, at least one of whom should be a BeagleBoard.org GSoC mentor. Provide email contact information for non-GSoC mentors.

+

−

# What will you do if you get stuck on your project and your mentor isn't around?

+

−

+

−

Miscellaneous

+

−

+

−

# Please create a statically-linked ARM Linux "hello world" style executable that prints out your name and the date. Add your binary to a fork of to the

+

−

a fork of the http://gitorious.org/beagleboard-validation/gsoc git tree. Provide here any instructions required for invoking it. You are welcome to test it on an ARM QEMU environment. Please feel free to visit our IRC channel, #beagle on irc.freenode.net, and ask for help.

+

−

# Is there anything else we should have asked you?

+

−

+

−

===What criteria did you use to select the individuals who will act as mentors for your organization? Please be as specific as possible===

+

−

Mentors were chosen based on personal knowledge of their contributions over IRC helping community members, the mailing list, and specific projects of interest.

+

−

+

−

===What is your plan for dealing with disappearing students?===

+

−

We will set the expectation that students will not be out of communication for more than 60 hours (ie, the length of a weekend) without prior notification to their mentor. We'll also hold mandatory weekly meetings in IRC for all the students to report on progress made, problems encountered, and proposed next steps.

+

−

+

−

All mentors are expected to review the SoC wiki and review the best practice sections. The project administrators will monitor all the projects and try to identify issues that might lead to disappearing contributors before the problem becomes unsolvable. (This applies to the next few answers also)

+

−

+

−

===What is your plan for dealing with disappearing mentors?===

+

TI-based mentors will have work-oriented commitments. We will choose non-TI-based mentors with a history of being involved in BeagleBoard.org projects and who are consistently responsive via IRC and e-mail. We plan to have secondary (paired mentors) and tertiary (general IRC channel) support for each project, and mentors will also be expected to attend the weekly check-in meetings on IRC. We will have a named contact in the same region and/or company as any mentor to assist in "pinging" any AWOL mentor.

TI-based mentors will have work-oriented commitments. We will choose non-TI-based mentors with a history of being involved in BeagleBoard.org projects and who are consistently responsive via IRC and e-mail. We plan to have secondary (paired mentors) and tertiary (general IRC channel) support for each project, and mentors will also be expected to attend the weekly check-in meetings on IRC. We will have a named contact in the same region and/or company as any mentor to assist in "pinging" any AWOL mentor.

===What steps will you take to encourage students to interact with your project's community before, during and after the program?===

===What steps will you take to encourage students to interact with your project's community before, during and after the program?===

−

We encourage candidates to interact with community members on the IRC channel and mailing list ahead of the program to gather information required for their application. We will work with the students to produce YouTube videos to introduce their projects to the community. Weekly blog post updates put into the community general RSS feed during and after the program help keep the community informed. Students are encouraged to hang out on #beagle which is active roughly 24/7 during the program and we continue to see students remain from last year. We will give them hardware and swag following the program to keep them interested.

+

We encourage candidates to interact with community members on the IRC channel and mailing list ahead of the program to gather information required for their application. We will work with the students to produce YouTube videos to introduce their projects to the community. Weekly blog post updates put into the community general RSS feed during and after the program help keep the community informed. Students are encouraged to hang out on #beagle, which is active roughly 24/7, during the program and we continue to see students remain from last year. We will give them hardware and “swag” following the program to keep them interested.

−

+

−

===If you are a small or new organization applying to GSoC, please list a larger, established GSoC organization or a Googler that can vouch for you here.===

+

−

+

−

===If you are a large organization who is vouching for a small organization applying to GSoC for their first time this year, please list their name and why you think they'd be good candidates for GSoC here:===

+

−

+

−

===Anything else you'd like to tell us?===

+

−

+

−

===Backup Admin (Link ID)===

+

−

: Cathy Wicks <wicks.cathy @no spam gmail.com>

+

−

+

−

==Old questions==

+

−

+

−

===What criteria do you use to select the members of your group? Please be as specific as possible.===

+

−

Membership in the BeagleBoard.org community is open to all interested parties. Since this community is based on a common interest in a particular piece of hardware, there are no specific requirements for membership. Many community members are also members of specific open source projects, such as OpenEmbedded and GNU Radio. Other community members use and enhance existing open source software to develop innovative mobile applications using the Beagle Board.

+

−

+

−

===What license(s) does your project use?===

+

−

For code written for this project, we will use GPLv2. When the project is based on an existing open source package, the license of that package will be used.

+

−

+

−

Existing code is primarily GPLv2 and all kernel code should be so. Some developers use other FOSS licenses, such as MIT, LGPL, etc. There are some TI codecs available for use on the platform that are provided under publicly-available binary-only licenses as well as other binary firmware builds distributed as part of the Linux kernel, but these are discouraged from being used as part of any student project.

+

−

+

−

===What steps will you take to encourage contributors to interact with your project's community before, during and after the program?===

+

−

+

−

We understand that it is difficult for new people to start using the existing project mailing lists and irc channel, so we will create a specific Summer of Code email list and irc channel. Potential mentors will use these paths to work with students to develop ideas and project proposals. In at least one case, potential mentors have an existing relationship with some students, they will work directly with this group to prepare proposals. We understand that the preferred communication channels are the BeagleBoard.org lists and irc channel, during the Community Bonding Period we will introduce students to the these communication channels.

+

−

+

−

During the Community Bonding Period we will supply students with Beagle Boards and help them setup development environments.

+

−

+

−

Once we have accepted proposals, we will continue to use these resources, and develop additional communication paths as required.

+

−

+

−

After the project, we plan to support students with successful projects in any wrap up work needed, such as submitting code to the upstream project.

+

−

+

−

===What will you do to ensure that your accepted contributors stick with the project after GSoC concludes?===

+

−

Although we will start by using SoC specific communication paths, all students will be expected to monitor the primary email list and irc channel. Over the course of the summer students will be encouraged to start using the primary communication channels to work on their project. By transitioning students to the primary communication channels, we hope to integrate students into the larger community prior to the end of the summer of code.

+

===Are you a new organization who has a Googler or other organization to vouch for you? If so, please list their name(s) here.===

+

BeagleBoard.org is not a new organization to Google Summer of Code.

−

===Link ID===

+

===Are you an established or larger organization who would like to vouch for a new organization applying this year? If so, please list their name(s) here.===

−

BeagleBoard

+

BeagleBoard.org has not been approached by other organizations to vouch for them at this time.

−

===Public Email===

+

===What will you do to encourage that your accepted students stick with the project after Google of Code concludes?===

−

beagleboard@googlegroups.com

+

Although we will start by using GSoC-specific communication paths, all students will be expected to monitor the primary email list and IRC channel. Over the course of the summer students will be encouraged to start using the primary communication channels to work on their project. By transitioning students to the primary communication channels, we hope to integrate students into the larger community before the end of summer of code so that they can continue to work on their projects via our IRC channel after GSoC concludes.

How does a mentoring organization apply?

The organization should choose a single administrator to submit its application via the Google Summer of Code 2013 site between March 18 – March 29, 2013.

Jason Kridner will be the administrator, but is looking for volunteers to help edit the application contents and to update the ideas.

What should a mentoring organization application look like?

Organization Name

BeagleBoard.org

Description

BeagleBoard.org is an open source community of experienced hackers, hobbyists and engineers who are enthusiastic about building powerful,open ARM-based systems based on the same processors used is in popular, high-end Android phones today. BeagleBoard.org’s vision is to improve access to small, low-power computing platforms that can be embedded into new creations using easy to use development tools, such as the web-based IDE. The hardware designs of all Beagle boards are open source with all schematics, bills-of-materials, layouts, etc. shared for building other devices. The software is also open source and is generated by the community(such as the Angstrom Distribution, Ubuntu, Android and other Linux distributions). Compiler tools are free and the board is available at a low cost. Boards will be provided for free to any student participating in a BeagleBoard.org-related GSoC project.

Texas Instruments sponsors a number of BeagleBoard.org-related activities and the first members of the community were TI employees, however, the collaboration base is now stronger than ever with over 5,000 members on the mailing list, over 100,000 individual developers worldwide who have purchased Beagle hardware and over 150 developers who actively participate on the live chat (IRC channel) at any given time. Existing projects are often for the purpose of building robots, autonomous flying drones, automotive entertainment and navigation systems, home media centers, digital signs, wearable computers or gaming consoles and include versions of Android, Ubuntu, Angstrom, Gentoo, FFmpeg, XBMC, ROS, OpenCV and much more (with over 300 projects registered at http://beagleboard.org/project).

Home page

Main Organization License

GPLv2

Why is your organization applying to participate in Google Summer of Code 2013? What do you hope to gain by participating?

By participating in GSoC 2013, we hope to grow our base of open source developers interested in embedded and heterogeneous multi-core software development environments that provide long-term power and performance advantages over the limited use cases of desktop and existing mobile computers. We hope to enable those developers to apply the core components running on BeagleBoard to take computing into more environments and with new environmental interactions.

We hope to increase interest in computers and electronics through improved access, simplified interfaces and example projects.

Beyond basic technology issues, we also hope to create better versions of popular open source applications for this low-cost/low-power platform and the ARM, C6000, SGX and PRU processors used to power the different Beagle boards. Because the Beagle platform has open source hardware, any software designed on it can be taken and put into entirely new products. Leverage of embedded Linux further helps software developed to be easily used in other systems.

Has your organization participated in past Google Summer of Codes?

Yes.

If you answered “yes” to the question above please summarize your involvement and the successes and challenges of your participation. Please also list your pass/fail rate for each year.

Students advanced the state of the XBMC media center application on ARM, OpenCV using heterogeneous processing systems, FFTs on ARM, pulse width modulation under Linux, compilation and invocation of heterogeneous processor functions under Linux and USB bus analysis under Linux.
We had an excellent set of mentors with 3 mentors for every student to ensure high availability of mentor time via the IRC channel. Our mentors had deep knowledge relevant to the projects and were able to assist the students in each of their technical challenges. We monitored student progress with weekly blog posts and IRC meetings to keep them on track and resolve any blocking issues. We collected short video presentations introducing each project, giving observers a good idea of the students' goals. We screened out projects that wouldn't provide sufficiently reusable software for the rest of the community.

We had some challenges shipping hardware to students on a timely basis and them getting charged taxes upon receipt, but we have plans in place to make it run smoother this year by getting local TI or other company offices involved. Getting local business offices involved would also enable a bit more face-to-face interaction as we can also invite local mentors to local meet-ups at those offices. Not all the code was directly adopted by the upstream projects and made available across the BeagleBoard community. Integration into a distribution will be a requirement this time to help with making the software more available to the BeagleBoard community and greater emphasis will be given on following up with upstream developers. More focus will be given to projects directly impacting the BeagleBoard community, rather than relying on upstream projects that might not be fundamentally motivated to adopt the patches.

Pass/fail rate for 2010: 6/6

If your organization has not previously participated in Google Summer of Code, have you applied in the past? If so, for what year(s)?

N/A – BeagleBoard.org has applied and participated in the past.

What Open Source Initiative approved license(s) does your project use?

What is the main development mailing list for your organization?

What is the main IRC channel for your organization?

irc.freeenode.net #beagle

Who will be your backup organization administrator?

Cathy Wicks (c-wicks@ti.com)

What criteria did you use to select the mentors? Please be as specific as possible.

Mentors were chosen based on personal knowledge of their contributions over IRC helping community members, the mailing list, and specific projects of interest. With the BeagleBoard.org community existing now for 5 years, many of the same members are still very active and well-known to our GSoC administrators. We typically meet up at Embedded Linux Conference, Design West, Linaro meetings and several other small events. Given frequent support over IRC, it is clear which proposed mentors are the best candidates.

What is your plan for dealing with disappearing students? Please be as specific as possible.

We will set the expectation that students should not be out of communication for more than 60 hours (i.e., the length of a weekend) without prior notification to their mentor. We'll also hold mandatory weekly meetings in IRC for all the students to report on progress made, problems encountered, and proposed next steps.

All mentors are expected to review the GSoC wiki and review the best practice sections. The project administrators will monitor all the projects and try to identify issues that might lead to disappearing contributors before the problem becomes unsolvable. (This applies to the next few answers, as well).

What is your plan for dealing with disappearing mentors? Please be as specific as possible.

TI-based mentors will have work-oriented commitments. We will choose non-TI-based mentors with a history of being involved in BeagleBoard.org projects and who are consistently responsive via IRC and e-mail. We plan to have secondary (paired mentors) and tertiary (general IRC channel) support for each project, and mentors will also be expected to attend the weekly check-in meetings on IRC. We will have a named contact in the same region and/or company as any mentor to assist in "pinging" any AWOL mentor.

What steps will you take to encourage students to interact with your project's community before, during and after the program?

We encourage candidates to interact with community members on the IRC channel and mailing list ahead of the program to gather information required for their application. We will work with the students to produce YouTube videos to introduce their projects to the community. Weekly blog post updates put into the community general RSS feed during and after the program help keep the community informed. Students are encouraged to hang out on #beagle, which is active roughly 24/7, during the program and we continue to see students remain from last year. We will give them hardware and “swag” following the program to keep them interested.

Are you a new organization who has a Googler or other organization to vouch for you? If so, please list their name(s) here.

BeagleBoard.org is not a new organization to Google Summer of Code.

Are you an established or larger organization who would like to vouch for a new organization applying this year? If so, please list their name(s) here.

BeagleBoard.org has not been approached by other organizations to vouch for them at this time.

What will you do to encourage that your accepted students stick with the project after Google of Code concludes?

Although we will start by using GSoC-specific communication paths, all students will be expected to monitor the primary email list and IRC channel. Over the course of the summer students will be encouraged to start using the primary communication channels to work on their project. By transitioning students to the primary communication channels, we hope to integrate students into the larger community before the end of summer of code so that they can continue to work on their projects via our IRC channel after GSoC concludes.